Wow... a /reddit comment with wisdom rather than toxic hate... That's like, God Tier unique!

Posted by some guy named GrandOrc on reddit (a random thread feed I stumbled across as a non-reddit user).


PSA: The Vast Majority of PoE Players Are Casual

Seems like with every league, the elitism in [PoE] gets higher and higher. I remember back in Prophecy, people didn't have this kind of jaded view of the average player. When they talked budget build, they always talked about builds that could be completed for less than 20 chaos. When they talked about weapons, if it had more than 250 pDPS, that was a very solid weapon to clear the whole game. Farming Strats? If you were making 20 chaos an hour, then you were doing well. They understood that the average player wasn't an Empyrian making mirrors per week.

Now, [PoE] turned on the elitism up to the extreme. 250p DPS weapon? Piff, won't even get you to maps. What? You make less than 1 EX an hour? What are you, a scrub? Here's my budget build, all you need is an Atziri's Reflection (...) What do you mean it's not budget? It doesn't even use (link mirror worthy weapon) or a HH.

Guys, look at reality. Did you know that by the end of a league, less than 20% of all the players get to 12 Challenges Completed? You can get to 12 just by getting to yellow maps, even if you never even open the Challenges tab to know what you have to do, and yet only 20% of the player base ever gets to this point.

24 Challenges? That's the realm of the elites, only 2% of the player base will ever get to that point. It's realistically not even hard, just requires opening the Challenges Tab and doing all the filler challenges, like using Essences on your items or doing Vendor Recipes.

36 Challenges? A Handful, less than 0,5% of the player base ever gets to this point.

The average player makes far less than 1 EX in a Week, much less in an hour.

The average player doesn't get to Sirus.

The average player doesn't deal millions of DPS.

The average player can't afford a build that would cost more than 1 ex.

So when posting, please keep in mind that the average player isn't anywhere NEAR at the level that you guys think they are.

And the point is?

"

jackof8lades wrote:

And the point is?

Clearly, you missed it. Try again.

GGG (like many before them) enjoys challenging the top 2-5% of players more than they like engaging the other 95%.

Its just.. more fun I guess.

Whenever a build lets more than a few percent experience endgame (summoners, cyclone..) it gets shut down fast.

But, its a free game, so whatever. Design around the top 0.1%, and players will find the loopholes (herald stacking) that make it work. Of course, it means 95% of game skills and builds are irrelevant and everyone will flock to meme builds that arent fun to play.

*shrug* seems like everything is labeled as 'hate' these days

"

dachoppa wrote:

*shrug* seems like everything is labeled as 'hate' these days

If it's on reddit... well, it pretty much is.

"

trixxar wrote:

GGG (like many before them) enjoys challenging the top 2-5% of players more than they like engaging the other 95%.

Its just.. more fun I guess.

Whenever a build lets more than a few percent experience endgame (summoners, cyclone..) it gets shut down fast.

But, its a free game, so whatever. Design around the top 0.1%, and players will find the loopholes (herald stacking) that make it work. Of course, it means 95% of game skills and builds are irrelevant and everyone will flock to meme builds that arent fun to play.

But the reward structure is balanced more and more around casual players tho, hence more experienced players get insane ammounts of loot these days, to a point it's just stupid.
And besides deep delving there is no endgame designed around the 1% either, power creep has gotten so completely out of hand you really don't need to be some uber elite 0,001% to do endgame.

the vast majority of PoE players also don't read the forums or reddit, don't care about balance changes, the buff/nerf cycle, min maxing or even seeing endgame bosses.

They create whatever they think looks interesting, play it til they get bored then quit... and more power to them they are getting the enjoyment they want out of the game.

Basically those players you are worried about are immune to that toxicity because they never see or hear it and if you want to next level it a majority of the dick measuring that happens between the elitists is flacid anyway for a whole myriad of reasons.

"

jackof8lades wrote:

But the reward structure is balanced more and more around casual players tho, hence more experienced players get insane ammounts of loot these days, to a point it's just stupid.
And besides deep delving there is no endgame designed around the 1% either, power creep has gotten so completely out of hand you really don't need to be some uber elite 0,001% to do endgame.

I thought less than 5% had ever done uber elder, which is why I was saying 5 vs 95%. Could be wrong but I remember that from before the atlas changes.

I would guess significantly less than 2% have done AL8 Sirus

"

GGG enjoys challenging the top 2-5% of players more than they like engaging the other 95%.

Its just.. more fun I guess.

Whenever a build lets more than a few percent experience endgame (summoners, cyclone..) it gets shut down fast.

It's the guys who are streaming that keep a game alive; the total player base would be MUCH smaller without them. So any publisher has to keep the streamer base engaged.

To keep the streamer base engaged, it has to be both a challenging game and one that is constantly introducing new content for them to stream about.

If 90% of the player base could do all content on a 20c (or even 1 ex) budget, it would be a total fail for everyone financially.

So you make it hard, but you throw in a new meta every league. And you also give streamers enough new content that they can sometimes create metas you didn't plan for. Sometimes those metas make life a little too easy, but in general they make it possible for new players to go further than otherwise possible. That keeps more new players coming in and sticking around, and it keeps up the core income stream from MTX.

GGG needs the "other" 90% to survive. But designing the game so that other 90% could all finish would just kill the game in the end.